How Many Processor Cores Are Enough?
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From: Nick Maclaren on 30 Sep 2006 05:24 In article <tFD*6H1rr(a)news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, Thomas Womack <twomack(a)chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes: |> |> http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/events/idffall_2006/pdf/IDF%2009-26-06%20Justin%20Rattner%20Keynote%20Transcript.pdf Thanks. Interesting. I can't say that I am convinced, because the success will depend on whether people can make use of that power, and Intel didn't mention the communication bandwidth. However, I noted one amusing comment: And to provide the adequate memory bandwidth for a teraflop of computing power, we developed what we think is a really novel solution. The nove solution involves stacking a memory chip directly under the processor chip. A really novel solution? Aw, gee. Regards, Nick Maclaren.
From: Nick Maclaren on 30 Sep 2006 05:30 In article <1159585852.375350.39020(a)c28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, "rohit.nadig(a)gmail.com" <rohit.nadig(a)gmail.com> writes: |> |> On the typical week-night, I am using my 1.8ghz laptop to do all of the |> following simultaneously: |> |> - Reading news articles |> - Working on a remote unix host using VNC |> - Playing a video on youtube in a minimized window (I listen to the |> video if its a talk show) |> - logged on google talk and yahoo messenger |> - Responding to work email on Microsoft Outlook |> |> I probably have 500 threads- 600 threads on my laptop. I think we are |> still far away from the utopia of computing. There's plenty of CPU |> hungry applications that havent been born yet. You are missing the point. Of those threads, perhaps all but 2-5 are waiting on an event (usually a response from some other thread). As several of us have posted before, there are very good arguments for a fairly large cache of contexts, so that context switching would be very fast, but very little for more than about 4 cores that would execute threads in parallel. The current exceptions are (a) servers and (b) HPC. It is POSSIBLE that desktop applications with be parallelised in the near future, but that has been said for 20 years. Regards, Nick Maclaren.
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Niels_J=F8rgen_Kruse?= on 30 Sep 2006 12:31 Felger Carbon <fnsfmf(a)jps.net> wrote: > A very few power users - say, 3 to 5 in the world - will be able to use lots > and lots of cores. The vast majority of the public will not run more than > one task at a time, which at this time means only one core. Rip a CD to AAC or MP3 in iTunes and you use more than one core. -- Mvh./Regards, Niels J?rgen Kruse, Vanl?se, Denmark
From: rohit.nadig@gmail.com on 30 Sep 2006 16:07 > You are missing the point. Of those threads, perhaps all but 2-5 are > waiting on an event (usually a response from some other thread). As > several of us have posted before, there are very good arguments for > a fairly large cache of contexts, so that context switching would be > very fast, but very little for more than about 4 cores that would > execute threads in parallel. I see your point, but I see that you missed the fact that we are far away from a utopian computing environment. Here's what I'd like: - A secure website that tells me the status of every electrical gadget in my home (a webserver that is polling the status of each of these devices) - An alarm system that would give me a live video feed when there is an intrusion into my house (either on my cell phone or on a work computer) - A global calender that keeps track of my kids school year (I dont have kids yet, but you get the idea). I'd like to see details on every homework (submission date, - High end video environment (DVR + DVD + On-demand + Regular TV) all in HD - Ability to serve videos to any display in the home - Communication with my car, and automatically managing my calender for when it needs to be serviced - Updated GPS maps - Sync all my media to my cars computer automatically ========================================== The list is endless. I can see how every one of these applications is ATLEAST 1 thread, if not more. These "daemons" can run on one computer or many. But they will all have to communicate, manage data, and be secure (think encrypted communication). My point is, as human beings in today's society, we are forced to do many mundane chores which can be offloaded to reasonable smart software programs. These applications have been built, yet. They will be. Who would've envisioned a day when you can sit on your home computer and look at all your bank transactions for the last 5-years. I am all ears on what you have to say, Nick :-) -Rohit
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Niels_J=F8rgen_Kruse?= on 30 Sep 2006 17:44
rohit.nadig(a)gmail.com <rohit.nadig(a)gmail.com> wrote: > - An alarm system that would give me a live video feed when there is > an intrusion into my house (either on my cell phone or on a work > computer) You forgot the Tazer coaxial with the snoop cam. :-) -- Mvh./Regards, Niels J?rgen Kruse, Vanl?se, Denmark |